It takes a lot of work to “ask.” You are essentially building your own grassroots funding network one person at a time on the streets. It means you are going to spend a lot of time, as she did, couch surfing and standing on street corners and living a hand to mouth life. It’s great if you can enjoy it. It’s easier for young people.
A lot of people don’t want to ask. They feel demeaned by asking. Most artists don’t want to do business. It takes time away from their art. Many abhor business and are willing to live hand to mouth in order to scrape along so they can spend as much time as possible making art.
The thing is, business is work. Art is fun. Business takes your soul. Art is indulging your soul. Who would want to do business when you can do art?
Well, people who need security do business. Most of us feel a need for security, so we work for a living, instead of trying to do art for a living.
I am near that point in life where I can quit work and do art because I have made my living. But I’m still not secure enough. So I’d still feel like I had to do business to do art. I believe that in doing business, you remain connected to your audience, and if you want to please people, that can be important.
It’s important for Amanda, but then she thrives on love. She does what I want to do. She falls into a sea of people, naked, and, well, has them draw on her. Next best thing to making love, I guess. She’s crazy, like me. Only unlike most crazy people, she’s manic. You can see it in her eyes, the way they shine and the way she smiles when she’s up on stage and everyone is focused on her as she tells her story.
I know what she’s feeling. I get that too, in my group meeting. My own little mini-TED talk that happens every other week or so. I get five or ten minutes and I make up a story on the spot, just like I make up answer here, on the spot, and I deliver a story that has a message and that moves people—if I’ve done it right. I get love in return. I would do that all the time, if I could make a living at it.
The thing about crowd-sourcing is that you can start small and build up. You can have a day job to keep you going. You can make connections. If you are an artist, you can go one of two ways. You can love the contact and get and return the love, or you can be rejected, and then you just turn to your art and do it for the love of it, no matter whether you find people who appreciate it or not.
Fluther is a sea of love, too. We, of course, call it lurve. And I fall into it regularly. It is my sustenance of my soul, and I work hard to deliver. Sometimes I hit. Sometimes I miss. But I’m always working hard, even though I never edit.
As to making people pay or letting them pay, there’s no need to choose. We can all do some of each. There’s room for all models of business. If it works, it works. That’s the only way to judge. As far as I can tell, both models work. But different models probably fit different personalities.
Some people can fit within the corporate model. Others can’t. Fortunately, there’s a way that both can make enough money to get along.
She was shooting for 100K. She got 1 million. I wonder what she did with the extra 900 thousand?
Composing members:
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Composing members:
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